Dept. of Amplification: “Who the Hell Is Bettye LaVette?”

In this week’s issue of the magazine, Alec Wilkinson writes about Bettye LaVette (available in the digital edition for subscribers), “the last great vernacular black singer that almost no one knows of.” LaVette’s first record came out in 1962, when she was sixteen, and she had a handful of minor hits on the rhythm-and-blues charts in the sixties and seventies, including the extraordinary “Let Me Down Easy,” from 1965. Watch her perform the song on “Shindig!”:

But her breakout performance didn’t come until two years ago, at the Kennedy Center Honors. She was discovered—if one can be “discovered” after nearly five decades in the business—by Michael Stevens, one of show’s the producers, who was looking for someone to sing “Love Reign O’er Me” as part of the evening’s tribute to the Who.

Stevens was watching videos on the Internet one day, trying to find someone to sing the song, when he thought, Who the hell is Bettye LaVette? He found a video of her at a festival in the Netherlands in 2006, singing “Little Sparrow,” by Dolly Parton. “She strolls out and you hear a little bass line and, boom, she goes, and I thought, Why is this person not better known?”

Watch LaVette perform “Little Sparrow”:

The first time LaVette heard “Love Reign O’er Me,” after Stevens had proposed that she sing it as part of the tribute, she wept—and not tears of joy. “The biggest opportunity I’ve ever been offered in my life, and this is the song I’ve been given,” she told Wilkinson. “I felt completely defeated.” Wilkinson sympathizes:

It’s an affecting song but difficult to sing persuasively, because some of the words are insipid (“Only love can make it rain / the way the beach is kissed by the sea”) and because the melody is slight, and overshadowed by a blustery refrain.

But LaVette pulled it off:

The gestures she made—rolling her hands as if to gather momentum, letting her shoulders go slack in submission, slapping her hip as if to urge herself on, and raising her hands above her head to plead—were arresting, and her performance seemed startlingly authentic. Throughout, [Roger] Daltrey and [Pete] Townshend, and [Barbra] Streisand, seated beside them, nodded and shook their heads, as if listening to a galvanizing preacher.

You can watch the Kennedy Center performance below. Nodding and head shaking encouraged.

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